Can you really have it all? Part 2: The Goal

Back at the beginning of 2017 I had HUGE goals. I decided to focus as much as possible on building the wholesale arm of my business. I wanted to 10X my revenue from the year before and I wanted to have 30 Wholesale BFFs by the end of the year.

But then I was thrown a huge curve ball in the form of Reduced Time.

I believe that we need to do what we can with what we have and when things in our lives shift–the goals we set need to shift along with it.

If we don’t constantly reassess:

where we are

where we want to go

and how we are going to get there

We run the risk of taking something that was totally attainable and changing it into an impossibility.

I love setting big goals. I love to set HUGE ones. Some may call my goals "unrealistic" But think about it...if you want to lead an extraordinary life then you need to set extraordinary goals. Setting realistic goals and attaining them only means you didn't set your sites high enough and you are not realizing your maximum potential.

One important thing to remember when setting these huge "unrealistic" goals, is that they need to have a fluid timeline.

When life-things pop up, and the timeline gets shifted, we need to not beat ourselves up and just shift the goal along with the new time table.

Setting this HUGE goal and falling short doesn't mean that you failed, it only means that you didn’t have your timeline calibrated correctly. Adjust the timeline, keep going, and don't give up.

Lessons Learned

This year I learned a lot about my goal setting habits and what I can hope to accomplish in a limited timeframe. I planned all of my big releases of the year too late. A mistake I hope to be able to learn from moving forward. But I put a ton of pressure on myself to release a bunch of new cards and create all the accompanying physical mailers and update my line sheets (both my PDF and my online ordering sites before NSS at the end of May and again in July before The Seattle Gift Show). I ended up getting it done (at the done is better than perfect level), but I was a stressed out mess in the process.

The biggest mistake I made though wasn’t the Big Goals I had set, it was overestimating what I could accomplish in the very limited time that I had to focus on them.

This was very upsetting and frustrating. I am the type of person that thrives under pressure and when I set a goal and deadline I can 99% of the time figure out a way to get it done. This time around though it just wasn’t possible.

I am right now at this moment attempting to practice personal grace. I completely burned out trying to still reach these big goal I had set for myself. I completely overextended myself and I think it had an echo effect on all the people in my family. I somehow got lost in the goal and forgot to enjoy life in the moment.

In these moments I think it's important to list out all of the things and people in your life that you are thankful for, then go one step further and send them a letter. Let them know you are thinking of them, that you appreciate them and they make your life better just by being themselves.

Next week I am going to talk more about practicing self care and protecting your inner self from your big goals. We are on this planet for such a short time and we have so much to give the world but if we run ourselves into the ground then we aren’t able to give all that we potentially can.